


words

by scarecrowvv



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen, M/M, Scriddler, for him being as stepfather to ed's kid, harlivy appears for a minute bc theyre adorable, mostly just abt step father jon because i have....a big weakness, this is what happens when u give me room to make fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 02:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15378687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowvv/pseuds/scarecrowvv
Summary: There is absolutely no way on Earth that any child could mistake Jonathan for someone’s mother. He’s not even sure how this child - the child of a genius - could make this mistake.| or that one where jon's kinda a stepfather to baby engima and she keeps calling him mama, for some reason. |





	words

Emily is much like Edward in the sense that she seems to never stop  _ chatting _ ; as soon as she’s been able to, she  _ talks  _ and  _ talks _ . 

Jonathan’s known Edward’s only child for a few months, and he’s found that she already talks enough for two people with the few words she knows. If it’s not screaming  _ DADA dada  _ whenever Edward so much as comes within three yards of her, it’s pointing at random objects and bubbling out a string of noises that he thinks are supposed to be names -  _ baba  _ for her bottle,  _ poopah _ for Edward’s rubik’s cube, so on and so forth.

She’s a charming child, and the only baby he has ever found himself liking, but he’s just not sure what to make of her yet.

It’s nothing to do with the fact that she’s not biologically his, no - he’s made amends with the fact that (finally) being involved with Edward means being there for his daughter too, and he’s slowly begun to ease into that role of-

-of  _ something _ , something close to...step-parently. Or at least the  _ concept _ of it; he’s not sure how long it’ll take to call himself Emily’s father, or if she’d ever use a parental name for him - she’s never spoken to him directly before.

Stares, and oogles and  _ babbles _ with tiny noises, but has never reached for him or directly referred to him with anything close to a coherent word.

It takes about five months of knowing her, when she’s almost a year old, for that to change.

Edward’s out at the moment - something about meeting with Oswald for something or other - when Emily makes a few noises from her playpen, standing and then falling back on her bum as she loses her balance.

Jonathan usually leaves her in there for a bit and takes her out to play on the carpet in front of the television, but there’s something about the way her lip purses, her face close to crying - and the fact that her screeching is something he’s  _ still _ not used to - that causes him to put down his book and lumber over to her.

He looks down at her a little awkwardly, not sure how to comfort her; Edward usually is all cooing and snuggling, holding her close as he shushes her when she’s ready to throw a fit, but Jonathan doesn’t know if he’s able to do that.

(He can’t even do anything close to that with Edward, on the rare, rare occasions where Edward gets into a sort of crying fit - both men rarely cry and seek that kind of comfort, but Jonathan still feels….guilty, almost, that he cannot comfort Edward with hugs and shushes and kisses like other people in relationships would do. He thinks it might be impossible for him.)

He looks down at Emily, though, trying to figure out what to do; how does one comfort the eight month old child of the person they are in lov- dating? 

He peers down at little Emily, who now is sitting down in her pen and staring up at him with wide green eyes, almost the exact shade as her father’s. 

(Whoever Emily’s other parent is, Jonathan notes amusedly, there’s not much of them in this baby Nygma; Emily is almost exactly like Edward, from personality to looks.)

In all of Jonathan Crane’s very, very limited knowledge of babies, he tries the one thing he knows best in order to calm the baby as he notices her face beginning to pinch further:

“Hello.”

He just stares down at her, unsure of what to do - Edward has no problems with him holding her or cooing at her, in fact he  _ encourages _ it.

( _ “Jon, just hold her!” _

_ “She’s too small.” _

_ “She’s like. Five months old.  _ Of course _ she’s small.” _ )

But the idea of doing so on his own is….odd to him, almost a little too  _ familiar _ . He’s not sure yet how to handle the situation - what if she cries and cries until Edward gets home, and he becomes upset that Jonathan didn’t do anything to comfort her? What if she pinches Jonathan’s nose like she did when she was five and a half months old? What if-

“Mama,” the small, chubby-cheeked baby coos from her pen, staring up at Jonathan.

Jonathan pauses, fingers tightening around the edge of the playpen as he stares down at the small child, completely halted.

He thinks he didn’t hear her right - babies babble,  _ Emily _ babbles, she still says  _ dada _ and can’t hold a conversation, so there’s-

“Mama,” the baby tries again, this time holding up her little arms.

“Excuse me?” Jonathan replies, momentarily forgetting he’s speaking with a less-than-a-year-old baby. 

Emily’s face begins to redden and pinch as she shakes her arms, clearly upset that she’s not being scooped up. “ _ Mama _ !” she cries again, this time with a much more wobbly, screechy voice.

Jonathan’s eye twitches in confusion and  _ bafflement. _ “I’m-” He starts, unsure of what to say. She clearly wouldn’t understand him clarifying that he is  _ not _ her mother, that that title is absolutely useless and unfitting for him, and he can’t get annoyed at a  _ baby _ for this mistake.

He stiffens and bristles when she begins to cry, clearly distraught that he is making no moves to pick her up; Edward is always first to hold her and coddle her when she is this upset, and Jonathan frowns as he looks down at her.

“Stop that,” he tells her softly, sighing as she carries on. “You don’t need to do that; here, fine, I’ll bring you over to the couch so you can sit.”

Very slowly, Jonathan bends to pick her up; he lifts her up at arm’s length at first, but as soon as he brings her closer to make his way to the couch, little Emily grabs at his shirt, trying to bury her face in his neck.

“Mama!” she says again, finally sounding happy. “Mama, Mama, Mama,  _ Mama! _ ” She continues, tears subsiding.

Jonathan sighs through his nose, carefully prying her from his shirt as he sets her down on the couch.

“Not Mama,” he tells her, sitting on the other side after giving her one of her favorite stuffed animals - a simple yellow bunny. “Just. Jonathan.”

She doesn’t comment, clearly not having the capabilities for handling a name with so many syllables, but Jonathan cannot focus back on his book for the next hour.

\--

When Edward comes home, Jonathan doesn’t tell him about it straight away - it’s silly, really, to be so off balanced with something like this. But there’s a part of Jonathan that thinks Edward would like to know, just in case this is too much - maybe he’d become upset that he missed it, or relieved that Emily was so taken with Jonathan.

But Jonathan can’t help but narrow his eyes when he finally tells Edward later that night, pulling him aside while Emily eats her dinner, and Edward finds the whole thing utterly  _ hilarious _ .

“Wait, she called you  _ Mama _ ?” Edward asks, laughing behind a hand. “Jon, you’re not serious.”

“She did, multiple times,” he replies, pinching the bridge of his nose when he hears Edward almost  _ giggling _ into his palm. “It’s not funny, Edward.”

“It’s a  _ little _ funny,” Edward says, grinning.

“No, it isn’t,” Jonathan presses, frowning. “I’m not her mother. She’s never even called me by my first name before; why is she calling me  _ Mama _ all of the sudden?” Jonathan blinks slowly. “Did you teach her to do it?”

Edward stares at him for a moment, rolling his eyes. “No, Jon, I did not teach my eight month old daughter to call my boyfriend  _ Mama _ . Why on Earth would I do that?” He asks seriously.

“Because you think it’s funny.”

“It  _ is  _ funny, but that’s not because I  _ planned _ it all out. Come on, now.”

Jonathan looks away. “....why Mama?” he asks, mostly to himself; he’s been pondering over it since she first called him that, wondering why she chose that name out of all others - Daddy, Papa, etc - to call him.

Edward passes by him, motioning for him to follow; Jonathan does, slowly at first, hesitating almost as he sees Edward duck into the kitchen to where they left Emily just a few minutes before.

She’s halfway through her dinner when she looks up at them, waving her little arms around when Edward comes back over.

“Dada, Dada!” she cries, giggling.

“Hello!” Edward chirps back, stopping to lean down and peck her little forehead - Jonathan can’t help but feel a bit of fondness at that action. 

He still has trouble understanding what it  _ means _ and what to do when he gets like that - fond, mushy,  _ happy _ \- but he’s getting progressively better at not getting frustrated and annoyed at the feelings.

“Okay, so I’m still Dada,” Edward comments, stepping back to survey the little girl. He glances back at Jonathan, before stepping aside and looking at Emily again. “Alright, baby girl, who is that?” he asks, pointing at Jonathan.

Jonathan frowns, stiff again; he watches as Emily’s little eyes make contact with him, and she stares for a few moments.

She doesn’t do anything, and Jonathan almost breathes out in relief; perhaps it was a fluke, just a baby making a simple, dumb mistake. It wouldn’t the first time a child has said something completely incoherent and unusual.

“She’s back to just staring at me,” he says, sighing again. “Thank God.”

Edward frowns. “Oh, so you want her to ignore you?” he says, not angrily; he’s just probing, trying to make sense of things.

“I don’t want her calling me her mother.”

Edward waves him off before moving into the dining room. He walks to one of the cabinets, reaching up to grab a mug; it’s when he’s busy making some tea that Emily accidentally knocks her sippy cup onto the floor.

Jonathan watches as her face gets that reddened  _ pinch _ again, realizing she’s a heartbeat from a screaming fit; Jonathan pads over quickly, bending to pick up her cup and curb it before it starts.

He goes over to quickly rinse it off - Edward would kill him if he just  _ handed _ his daughter her sippy cup that fell on the  _ floor _ without washing it first, even if it was only there for a millisecond - and it’s when he comes back, picking up his pace when he hears Emily’s first few huffs, that he hears:

“Mama!”

And she’s staring  _ right _ at him with a big, dimpled smile.

Edward gasps from the dining room; Jonathan looks down at the baby, blinking slowly.

_ Not again _ , Jonathan thinks exasperatedly, running a hand through his hair.

Edward comes over to Jonathan’s side, staring down at his little daughter with big eyes. “What was that, baby?”

Emily looks at Edward for a second, and then back at Jonathan; Jonathan is almost uncomfortable when he sees so much  _ fondness _ in her face, as though she really was looking at-

At her Mama, despite how  _ odd _ the whole thing was.

(There is absolutely no way on Earth that any child could mistake Jonathan for someone’s mother. He’s not even sure how this child - the child of a genius - could make this mistake.)

Emily is still looking up at Jonathan, though, when she says: “ _ Tata _ , ba, Mama!” she says, looking very triumphant despite making no sense to Jonathan.

“She’s seriously calling you that.” Edward says, looking up at Jonathan. “She’s- she’s calling you. Mama.”

“I don’t understand,” Jonathan says slowly, frowning. “I am very, very confused. I need a coffee.”

As soon as he turns his back, Emily makes a few cries, slamming her little hands on her high chair as she says: “Mama!” over and over again.

“Mama’s overwhelmed right now,” Edward says, voice still tight with confusion, but when Jonathan looks back, he’s reaching over to his daughter, scooping her up. “Let Dada hold you, okay?”

“ _ Do not _ refer to me as that in front of her,” Jonathan says, shaking his head as he begins pouring his coffee next to Edward’s abandoned tea. “Let her grow out of this.”

He prays that Emily grows out of this.

\--

In short, she doesn’t.

Gone are the days that she stares after Jonathan and makes tiny baby gargles at him as he passes; she’s taken to calling him Mama as much as she calls Edward Dada.

When he’s reading and trying to unwind after a day of mixing chemicals and pouring over blueprints, Edward will pass by with Emily in his arms - and she’ll point right at Jonathan, crying out for him with that  _ name _ .

When she’s hungry and calls desperately for them to notice her; it’s a mixture of  _ Dada  _ and  _ Mama _ .

And, to his complete and utter chagrin and  _ horror _ , now around their acquaintances.

Luckily the other rogues do not make a habit of dropping by often; Edward likes to keep Emily as safe as possible and likes limiting her exposure to the other rogues, especially ones that they do not know very well.

There’s exceptions to this rule, obviously, and Harley and Pamela just  _ have _ to be around when Emily is in one of her fits.

Harley’s just been cooing at the little baby, trying to get her to say  _ Auntie Harley _ , when Jonathan walks by, chuckling a little to himself at how taken Harleen is with Edward’s little daughter. 

As soon as Jonathan passes by, however, Emily looks over at him, points, and says: “Mama!”

Harley stops, Pamela looks up from her spot next to her longtime girlfriend, and both of them  _ burst _ out laughing.

“Oh my God,” Harley says, wiping at an eye. “Professah, Professah does- does the baby call you  _ Mama? _ ”

“That’s adorable,” Pamela says, laughing behind a hand. “I can’t- Crane, you’re the Mama?”

Jonathan grumbles to himself and lumbers off.

\--

The thing is, Jonathan’s fondness for little Emily does not wean because of this….situation, not at all. He cares for her strongly; she’s the daughter of the only person he’s ever loved so strongly, and after being around her in the most pivotal moments of her upbringing, he can’t help but feel protective and  _ care _ for the small child.

(He never thought he’d  _ have this _ , is the thing; he’s built his entire life around the assumption he’d always be alone. Edward and his daughter - they changed that. He has a family.)

He isn’t sure if it’s because he’s so impersonal, or if it’s because he is not Emily’s father by blood, or if it’s because he feels  _ odd _ about being referred to with such a title as  _ mama _ , but wrapping his head around the concept that Emily is so fond of him that she calls him  _ Mama _ is something Jonathan cannot solve, for once.

He knows there are a couple of things he’d be able to say if someone else were to come to him with this problem; the psychiatrist in him, the  _ Doctor Crane _ side, would easily be able to solve this.

The  _ Jonathan _ side of him, however, cannot.

\--

“Mama,” Emily says, holding out her arms to him.

“No, Jon.” Jonathan says, making direct eye contact with her.

“Mama!”

“Jon.”

“Mama.”

“Jon.”

“Mama!”

“Jon.”

“Mama.”

“I’ll even take Uncle Jon.”

“Mama!”

“You’re extremely stubborn. You are  _ absolutely _ Edward’s daughter.”

\--

Emily grows and her  _ terrible twos _ arrive; she’s still the sweet, affectionate baby she has always been, but with the ability to walk and speak in more than incoherent baby noises, and the fact that she is a Nygma makes this a problem.

If she’s not jumping into Edward’s lap while he’s trying to show Jonathan the latest plan he has to obtain as much money as he can while at home, she’s running down the hall in her diaper with Jonathan chasing her because she will  _ not _ go into the bath. She tears through hallways, grabs pant legs, yells at them when she wants their attention; Jonathan does not know the intimate details of Edward’s childhood, but he has a nagging feeling that this must be what Edward was also like as a small child.

“She’s so fast,” Jonathan says, heaving out breaths as Emily runs away from him yet again, screaming  _ NO no bath no bath! _ He leans down, hands on his knees. “She’s so very fast.”

Edward nods sympathetically from where he sits, putting a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder.

He’s almost about to speak - probably to make some snide remark about how Jonathan only thinks so because  _ haha _ he’s  _ old _ , or whatever joke he has up his sleeve today - when Emily peeks out from behind the couch, a wide grin splitting her face.

She sticks her tongue out, and says: “Mama tired!”

She’s called Jonathan  _ Mama  _ less since she’s aged; she uses Jon much more now, alternating between that and her special nickname - but she seems to have realized that it’s the fastest way to gain Jonathan’s attention, although not for the right reasons.

“Jon,” he corrects yet again, walking towards her. “And I’m  _ not _ tired; you’re getting a bath, young lady. You can’t hide from me; I know the layout of this house. I will find you.”

“Old!” Emily giggles as she darts away from him, slipping right from his grasp. 

Edward bursts out laughing from behind them as Jonathan tries to find the tiny terror known as Emily Nygma.

\--

Emily stops using Mama as much when she turns two and a half - Edward is very serious about keeping the  _ exact  _ number of months right and will absolutely refer to his daughter as his  _ 30 month old _ daughter - and Jonathan finds himself….missing it, strangely.

They’ve become closer; he still is not ready to call her  _ his daughter _ just yet, but he wonders if one day he’ll be able to, and one day  _ soon _ . 

She asks him for hugs, she asks him to read to her. She likes the books he chooses; Edward goes for puzzle books and bright, challenging ones while Jonathan prefers to give her a solid understanding of the (lighter) classical literature that he believes a two and a half year old is ready to understand.

He cares for her deeply, but. Part of him can’t help but feel an odd twist in his gut when he muses over the fact that she has not called him  _ Mama _ in so very long; it’s infrequent nowadays, only once a month, at most.

He knows he’s not her mother, that Mama does not fit him by any means, but - he  _ misses  _ it.

(If the Crane from ten years ago was looking at him now, he’d have slapped himself in the face for it.)

(But then again, the Jonathan Crane from ten years ago was not living with the man he loved and helping raise that man’s daughter, was he?)

\--

The first time Jonathan calls himself Emily’s Mama and accepts that she is, and always was, his daughter, happens in the middle of an October night.

Emily’s supposed to be asleep in her bed; she’s not used to it, and doesn’t like having to go to sleep in a bed and away from Edward and him, and always gets up in the middle of the night to try and find them.

Edward usually checks on her, or asks Jonathan to, every few hours; just to make sure she’s asleep like she should be, for if little Emily Nygma does not get her sleep, she’s grumpy and hard to console in the mornings. This night, this time, Edward asks for Jonathan to do just that - Jon is a night owl anyways, and he wasn’t planning on sleeping for a while.

He pads to Emily’s room, and very quietly opens her door to peek in, and his heart skips a beat when he notices she’s not there.

He moves into her room fully and checks around; under the bed, in the closet, behind the door - he almost tears her room apart before he says anything to Edward about it.

_ Perhaps _ they overreact a little, but as supervillains with a long list of enemies - there’s valid reasons for them to spend the next hour tearing through the house looking for the little girl. Jonathan even checks the backyard to be safe; when he comes inside, Edward is near tears as he frantically looks for his daughter.

Edward doesn’t cry often, but it always tears at something deep within Jonathan’s chest when he sees it - he looks away and moves to go back up the stairs to make a few calls. Pamela and Harley, Selina, Oswald, maybe even Freeze or Harvey - has there been any whispers or murmurs about this, have they seen Emily-

Jonathan stops dead in his tracks when he’s halfway through dialing Oswald’s number, standing right next to he and Edward’s shared bed, when he hears sniffles coming from the walk in closet.

Jonathan almost kicks himself for not having thought of it - there was a moment where he was in the shower and Edward was downstairs, room completely unmonitored for a few, precious minutes, when Emily could have snuck in.

He opens the closet, and finds her right there; she’s sitting in the back, cuddling one of Jonathan’s own flannels, crying to herself.

Jonathan immediately calls for Edward, telling him that she’s safe and it’s alright, and knowing that soon there will be a big discussion about how in the  _ hell _ two intelligent people didn’t think to check their closet for a small child, but he reaches forward for Emily.

She immediately runs into his arms, burying her wet face into his neck; she was scared, she babbles, nightmare. Wanted to see them, they were gone. Didn’t know what to do, hid. A tiny, odd solution that made complete sense for a small child - hide in the closet until they found her.

Jonathan doesn’t try to wrap his mind around it; he brings a hand to her back very slowly, and brings her a little closer. It’s one of the first times he has truly….comforted her, cuddled her. He’s gotten better at it over the years; he’s not a warm and soft person, not by any means. Nothing will ever change that - but he’s just a bit better.

He barely registers Edward coming over beside him, cooing and petting his -  _ their _ , their daughters - hair, comforting her, as Jonathan murmurs a: “It’s alright, baby. Mama’s right here.”

And he really means it.

\--

“Papa,” Emily says, skipping up next to him as she holds up a piece of paper. “Look! I got a  _ hundred  _ on my science test. I told you and Dad it wasn’t that hard!”

Jonathan shakes his head at his twelve year old daughter, impressed but knowing he has to be stern. “I’m proud of you, Em,” he tells her, patting her curls. “But you still need to do the homework. You can’t just do good on tests and expect to get the grades we expect you too, you know.”

Emily sighs. “Homework is stupid,” she tells him, rolling her eyes. “It’s dumb and I know it all and Dad didn’t even do his homework in school.”

Jonathan turns back to washing the pot in the sink. It feels hard to do this simple task, for some reasons; his hands haven’t been working the way he wants them to lately. “I don’t think Edward is a good example of perfect school behavior,” he reminds her. “He’ll even tell you that he wishes he did the homework when he was-”

“Homework sucks, Jon, stop lying,” Edward calls from the living room, and Jonathan sighs.

“I am trying to teach our daughter a moral lesson.”

“See, homework sucks!” Emily says, putting down her test paper and pumping her fist. “We should burn it!”

“ _ No _ .”

She frowns, pursing her lips and sighing dramatically; but it’s out of fondness, he notices as she watches him shakily put back the pot on the kitchen counter.

“Here, Pop,” Emily says gently, moving over to take the sponge from him. “Go sit. I can do the dishes.”

Jonathan feels flushed when he realizes his hands have been shaking again for the past few minutes; he knows that he doesn’t need to be doing so much with his hands anymore, but he hates that Emily has picked up on it. She’s much too young to worry about her aging father.

“So you’ll do the dishes but not homework,” Jonathan notes. “Hm.”

Emily laughs, and moves to help him; he doesn’t want to just abandon her with them, and offers to dry them for her while she washes the few dishes left in the sink.

Standing there with her, a memory - well, a few memories, connected to one another through one word - begins to play in his mind; he blinks, looking down at his shaking hands as he says:

“Do you remember when you called me Mama?” he asks, voice soft; Emily blinks, looking up at him.

“Huh?”

“You used to call me Mama.”

Emily looks back down at the dishes, a little embarrassed. “Uh. Kinda? Like - I remember bits and pieces of you saying to call you Jon and me just not doing that. Fuzzy, baby memories, but I kinda remember that.”

“I see,” he replies, nodding to himself. 

Emily stopped calling him Mama when she was around seven or so; apparently kids at school did not respond well when Emily’s very tall, very stoic stepfather came in and  _ this _ was the Mama Jon they’d been hearing about. She’d taken to calling him Papa since then, and he mostly was fine with it - but there were times where he missed the little girl running up to him with outstretched arms, calling him Mama.

“Why do you ask?” She’s looking at him again, frowning. “I hope it didn’t like, upset you. Dad said you didn’t really like it at first.”

He blinks. “I just didn’t understand, I suppose,” he tells her, laughing a little to himself. “I thought you were making fun of me, odd as it is. I didn’t really understand how the mind of an eight month old worked when you started calling me that.”

Emily nods. “Right.”

His gaze softens as he looks down at her. “I’m not upset about it,” he tells her, voice surprisingly soft. He looks out the kitchen window, at the snow covering the yard out back. “....I miss it, sometimes.” He confesses, almost to himself.

“Really?” she asks, voice soft.

“Mm,” he hums, looking down at the countertop again. “I didn’t understand it for a long time, but I miss you- I miss you being so young that your little brain told you to call me that. It was endearing.”

“You still call me endearing all the time,” Emily says, resting her head against his bony bicep for a few moments. “Nothing’s changed, I just got a little older, is all.” She’s quiet again, looking down at her hands. “I never thought you were a  _ girl _ or my mom, or anything. I just liked the name for you.”

“I know that now,” he tells her; he would be lying if he said he didn’t think, for a time, that Emily had been teasing him when she first started calling him Mama. It took him a long time to realize that small children are not as cruel as the rest of the world - that’s a learned thing. “I suppose I just think about the past a lot, nowadays.”

There’s something soft and loving in Emily’s gaze, almost obscured by her glasses; she just looks at him for a moment, and then suddenly wraps her arms around his waist, resting her cheek into his chest.

“I love you, Mama.”

Jonathan pets her hair, and he’s not sure why he feels such  _ emotion _ behind it - but he does.

“I love you too, my little crow.”

And he does; with his entire being, he loves his little family. His life partner of over a decade, and their little, wonderful daughter.

**Author's Note:**

> i know this is pretty ooc but like....there comes a time where u just gotta write some ooc fic for ur supervillain otp.....u just have to . theres no rhyme or reason for it.


End file.
